"What all those players have in common, and what is crucial to the modern game, is that they can all run - and quickly.

"But I would imagine Sir Alex will have been invigorated from watching Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich and will have thought: 'Right, we missed out this year. But I'm going to get my players into that mentality so that we're going to be there in 2014 and 2015.'

"This United team are on an upward curve. Monday wasn't the summit of their potential achievements. It was one of the smaller peaks along to the way to the summit."